Cloud the GOD sent technology, at-least that's what the industry leaders tell us. It is low costs. Unlimited scalability. Constant availability. Quick and easy implementation. Sound too good to be true? Well, everything that sound so easy and you know how “easy” things ends…
We know the hardware war for quality and speed has almost become stable, every hardware company is ensuring quality, we have 5 year warranty based on this. If they don't maintain speed and quality they will be out of business in no time that's the natural check. Further, as per our today's average computing needs we don’t use 50% of the processing availability. More than 80% of us can wait for few minutes to get a report.
Now when things are so tight and saturated in the market, how do organization make handsome profits. The answer is Cloud Computing, make users depend on the industry or the service provided. It is something like Cable TV or a DTH, Spend small amount for the onetime cost for the BOX or sometime the BOX is given free and you are requested to pay small amount every month to the Cable TV or DTH company, if need to watch sports you pay more for that particular channel (value addition) if you retrospect you will notice that you have been shelling out 10times than normally otherwise you would have. Similar is the story of Cloud computing, someone will have the money invested in hardware resource, this resource will be shared by all the user and every user will pay for what he is using. So you don’t own the hardware nor the software but pay only for the service. Which will at the end “will” turn out more expensive than the current setup.
For example Google gives us the desktop like service on the cloud, with spreadsheet, wordeditor etc, of course there is a free version for everyone to use, but when you want adapt it for your organization over your existing setup, you will have to pay a small fee for every users, if I am not wrong it is $50 per user. If you add 10 users it is $500, you still need a computer like interface, a keyboard, a mouse, a monitor, a storage device to work on this, only thing missing is processing power and applications such as open-office or MS office, virus scanner. It's not the end, now you will have to invest on high-bandwidth because your cloud depends heavily on internet bandwidth and you got to pay more for this service.
Redundant
Now the trouble, If so it happens that you don’t pay for the service one fine day all you data is inaccessible. You are stuck, what will you do, you will pay, probabilities are with a fine and warning from the service provider (Just like our mobile phone service). Now you may think if you were with the you own system and storage, even if you did not pay for the AMC or other service you still have system available to you to run your business.
Cloud computing is the most attractive buzzword in the IT industry right now, raising the images of worry-free profits and improbable ROI in the minds of IT managers and the three major players, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, have already invested heavily into cloud computing. If one were to believe the hype, he or she might think that could computing will solve all problems, that it is A GOD sent gift for IT.
What most of think in the IT about cloud computing.
I don't need dedicated space for my server nor the air-condition, Don’t have to worry about servers, software licenses and other capital costs, Disaster recovery? We don’t have to worry about it, won’t need a support staff - what I have now. Wow!! What a heap of savings! And, it’s so easy too.
I think this is also appropriate, The organization does not need the IT department itself and the IT manager, as everything is outsourced to a service provider. For any assistance you need to just call the service provided helpdesk and explain to him and the problem will vanish.
What I have to say is look in the ground reality and check don't go by the hype. Just think wasn’t Mainframe, SuperComputer, PARAM are working on the same concept of cloud computing?
By going to cloud understand first
What are your strategic advantages in your IT department?
What business processes and components you would not like the competitors to see?
What service level is necessary, especially during peak times? (Festival time or month ends you need hell lot of processing power)
How important is your data to you? Is it really something you can trust to someone else based on non- disclosure agreement ?
There might be prospect for a cloud solution, but come down to earth and think about it.
The industry trick is working on our cost saving, ROI, resource headache etc. requirement and to create a strategy around the cloud computing services and ways to make your adopt these services. Selecting the right architectural assets, such as storage, databases, application servers, and process servers, to place on cloud platforms, requires some excellent reasoning and planning to make cloud computing work for you. If you think just by purchase these services and hope that miracle will take place in the terms or ROI, etc etc. the chances are that you won't find the gold at the end of the cloud computing commitment, perhaps you will find your self as the gold-mine for the cloud service providers.
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